10/15/2007 @ 6:00PM

John Naisbitt On The Future

I was sure we would never see the adoption of the Euro. Countries giving up their currencies for a common tender was, it seemed to me, completely out of tune with currency being a carrier of people’s cultural identity, celebrating national heroes and events, as it had been for hundreds of years. Also, it was running against the world trend of decentralization as counterpoint to increased globalization. These decentralization forces are still in place, giving no guarantees that the Euro will survive the power of cultural identity and the new nationalism.

What’s something that totally surprised you?

I was totally surprised by the spread of the legalization of same-sex marriage. In just my lifetime we have gone from a taboo to even talk about homosexuality, to the sanction by governments of homosexual marriage. Few such large social considerations have ever before been turned over in such a short time.

John Naisbitt has worked as assistant secretary of education to President John Kennedy, special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson and as an executive with IBM and Eastman Kodak. He is a faculty member at the Nanjing University in China.